


The Grasper

by brightephemera



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alien Abduction, Gen, Teleportation, emergency beacon, irresponsible academia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22946446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: An emergency beacon directs Donna and the Doctor to a village that has been ravaged by a mysterious abductor.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Donna Noble
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	The Grasper

The TARDIS lurched in the space-time vortex. Something bright mauve flashed outside.

“Okay, that one wasn’t normal,” said Donna.

“Mauve alert!” The Doctor considered four levers and hit a fifth. “Danger. Emergency beacon, we’re locking in now.”

“Emergency? Whose emergency?”

The Doctor grinned over the control panel at her, and didn’t so much as blink at the small burst of sparks between. “We’ll find out when we get there.”

After a brief and alarming debate with vectors of acceleration the TARDIS creaked and settled at rest.

“You first,” said Donna.

“What? Why?”

“You’re telling me whether I need a coat this time.”

The Doctor stared. “It’s an emergency, not a ski trip.”

“Is it a chilly emergency?”

The Doctor looked out.

“No,” he said.

The scene was a grimy little hamlet consisting of slanted brown buildings up and down the dirt street. The TARDIS was settled in one corner of a mud-rutted square that centered on a dun stone well. The sky was cloudy but the sluggish breeze was warm, and Donna stepped outside in her T-shirt and felt that was enough.

There were people. Humanoid, pale with brown hair. They all wore chunky square-ish tunics in varying shades of bland, well worn and sometimes mud-stained.

“Hello,” said the Doctor. “I don’t suppose there’s…been an emergency?”

A tall woman, reedy and careworn, stepped forward. “I am the Elder. Do you come from beyond?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking.”

She looked anxiously grateful. “Did you see Sendal?”

“I’m sorry, who?”

A big man in darker clothes stomped up close. “We’ve no call for strangers,” he said loudly. “You can go on your way, traveler.”

“No, but you see,” said the Doctor, “we received a distress signal. A…do any of you…know anything about interplanetary…”

Donna had been studying the villagers. “No.”

“Someone here set that off,” said the Doctor. “We’d better find out who.”

People were gathering. They seemed healthy but defeated, upright but tight with dread. A girl, probably a teenager, was hustling a scrawny boy out of one of the crooked doors. The boy seemed to be mumbling to himself as he wrung his hands.

“We’re here to help. I’m the Doctor. So what is…ah…the trouble, exactly?”

The scrawny boy had started chanting quietly. The girl took his hand. The others paid him no mind.

“Do you not know, then?” said the Elder. “About the Grasper?”

“Not a thing,” the Doctor said brightly.

“It comes. Every two months. It takes us. Three strikes, three people. It just flashes and then they’re gone.”

“And someone who carries a very sophisticated alarm thinks that’s bad?” suggested Donna.

“Could be,” said the Doctor. “Now, about this–”

The air boomed. All of it. One big noise and a couple of small aftershocks. Something flashed and a blinding beam shot from a bright thing hovering a few meters up. The beam enveloped one of the townsfolk. There was a general sigh, too resigned to be called a scream. The thing was a white booth, smaller than the TARDIS, possessed of an articulated white arm that reached down to seize the woman it had spotlighted. It lifted her into the front of the booth.

There was a flash. The woman vanished. For a moment the booth remained, trailing dust. Then it disappeared.

“Oh.” The Doctor wasn’t smiling.

“Emergency?” said Donna.

“Please,” said the girl who was holding her chanting companion’s hand. “Can you stop it?”

“More boxes out of air,” said the big man. “I don’t see why we’re welcoming them.”

“We don’t have answers,” said the Elder. “For three years, we haven’t had answers. If someone comes to give instead of take…I won’t say no.”

The big man harrumphed and stepped into a nearby house.

Donna had started drifting among the two dozen sullen-looking townsfolk. “It’s all right,” she said. “We’re here to help.”

“You can’t stop them taking us,” said the girl.

“Oh, but we will.” She looked at the girl and the boy beside her. “You’ll be safe. I promise.”

The boy stiffened. “You’ll be safe,” he mumbled. “You’ll be safe.”

“Yes, that’s what I said,” said Donna.

The girl scowled at her. “He says all the promises made to him. The ones from our mum, our dad. They're all broken.”

“Oh,” said Donna, and her heart broke a little in spite of herself. “Have you made him a promise?”

The girl shrugged bleakly. “What would be the point?”

The big man came out and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I still don’t understand where that beacon is,” said the Doctor. “It’s got to be within two hundred meters.”

The Elder nodded thoughtfully. “That’s the entire town, if I understand ‘meters.’ How large is this thing?”

The Doctor frowned. “Well, I don’t know. It could be ah, sandwich sized…you don’t do sandwiches here, do you…ah, maybe my two fists together. But it could be smaller, too.”

“What color? What shape?”

“Mauve. Do you have mauve? Oh, and, no idea. But someone knows what’s happening here, and either they want help against it…or, I hate to say, they want help with it.”

A ripple ran among the assembly, and that’s when the air boomed again.

“Not to state the obvious, but does hiding work?” yelled Donna.

“That just means we die alone,” said the Elder. But she was shepherding people behind her, forming a line with the Doctor against the looming white thing and its merciless glow.

The thing reached straight past the Doctor. It seized Donna.

“No!” The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver and went for a weak point, any weak point. The arm withdrew. The booth flashed. Dust fell, and then it all was gone.

“No,” said the Doctor. “No.” He dashed to where the dust had fallen. “Respectfully,” he mumbled, and picked up a pinch of the dust. He dabbed a touch onto his tongue. “Completely inorganic. That’s not human remains. That’s not human anything. Which means – that’s got to be a teleport.” And, more quietly, “I won’t let it not be a teleport.”

“A telewhat?” said the Elder.

“A device that moves people from place to place. Place to place, that means there’s a destination. Maybe not a safe one, but these people were almost certainly alive when they got there.”

The Elder looked askance. “Does your box teleport?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“Can it go to the same place?”

“If I figured out where that is? Yes. I don’t have that part yet.”

“Anything you can do, Doctor. We are desperate.”

“Did you say this does it a few times in each incident?”

“Yes, three.”

“I have one left. Everyone, stick together. I’m going to invade some personal space if this thing doesn’t pick me next.”

“Arik, come stand with us,” said the elder. The big man scowled, but he came up alongside the Doctor.

“This is your last chance to leave,” he rumbled.

“My last chance hasn’t appeared yet,” said the Doctor. “But it will. In a flash of light.”

*

Donna Noble sat up. She was in a grimy dirt-packed square that, strangely, was not the grimy dirt-packed square she had been plucked from. For one thing there was neither Doctor nor TARDIS there.

She looked up. The sky was corrugated pink, rippling in rows from murky horizon to shadowed horizon. She might as well have been in a warehouse…a warehouse with a tiny settlement painted into dishevelment.

About two dozen hollow-eyed people in brown squares of clothing were gathering at the edge of the square, near the corners of the ramshackle houses. Again, pale, brown-haired, and haunted. A skinny man with a long white beard stood in front. “Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to the end of the world.”

“The what?” said Donna.

“This is where we go when we are called from the old world.”

“I’m sure you are. I want to see who’s in charge!”

The old man bowed, an operation he barely seemed to have the structural integrity to manage. “I am the elder here.”

Donna looked at him.

He looked at Donna.

“Do you know how you got here?” she said.

“We understand nothing of the Grasper,” he said.

Donna looked at him.

He looked at Donna.

Donna rolled her eyes. “I want to see who else is in charge!”

*

The air boomed. The middle distance flashed. A light pierced the foreground before the tattered cloudscape: a beam directly onto the chanting boy. The Doctor leaned down to pick the boy up when, suddenly, Arik behind the Doctor grasped him around the chest and hauled him out of the way. The boy got plucked up. The Doctor stayed behind. The girl who had been holding the boy’s hand started to cry, quietly, inoffensively.

“What are you doing,” fumed the Doctor, wriggling. “Put me down! I knew what I was doing!”

“You don’t have to share their fate,” said Arik, and let him go. “I saved you.”

The Doctor staggered away and rounded on him. “You left this entire village in danger!”

Arik sneered. “Because you were going to save us.”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Listen to me.” He raised his voice to a shout. “It’s more important than ever to get a communication out…any kind of signal. Any sign someone outside might be able to see, to get in and take me back. I’m willing to go. when the box calls. If _anyone_ can help.”

Arik harrumphed and turned away. The scene labored on under driving brown clouds. The villagers all wilted, as if there were no point worrying any more.

*

A light flashed behind Donna. When she turned the little boy with his promises stood there, wide-eyed.

“You’re safe with us,” he said. “You’ll be safe. I’ll protect you. You’re safe with us. You’ll be safe.”

“Come here,” said Donna, and hugged him. “We both made it. We’ll get out of this together.” He nodded without looking at her and she set his hands at his sides, then nodded at him. Then she spoke over his head, yelling toward the fake pink sky. “Now look here! You can see I’m not part of your village! I don’t belong here! I’m contaminating your sample!” She didn’t know what effect that would have, but it sounded good so she kept it. “I demand to see your supervisor!”

When she teleported, the boy stayed behind.

She found herself in a spacious office done in shades of grey. Two anxious-looking men in lab coats peered myopically at her.

“How did you do that?” said the older one.

“My name is Eether Vayne,” said the younger, “and we run this project. Who are you?”

Donna looked around at the computer screens, the piles of paper, the drink-stained islands of clear workspace. She had seen some nightmare workplaces in her temping days, but the look of an academic was uniquely desperate. “Donna Noble, if you must know.”

“Vander,” said Eether. “She’s speaking Plockish.”

“But that’s impossible,” said the other, Vander. “Who are you? You’re not Plockish, are you?”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead. There’s a telepathic field from – never mind. Yes, I can understand you. And you obviously understand me.”

Vander boggled. “How did you get to their planet?”

“I took a ride in a much posher spaceship than that,” said Donna. “What are you doing to these people?”

“Studying the development of their civilization!” said the first man. “We’re studying their development.”

“Well, put them back!”

“We can’t,” said Eether. “We don’t know how to reverse it short of flying someone out sublight.”

“You…don’t know how. You have got to be kidding me.”

“This laboratory fell into our hands after the war. And it had our first look at alien life that wasn’t trying to kill us. A chance to study a pre-contact civilization! We have been careful in selecting subjects for the intensive track.”

“No.”

“I'm sorry?”

“Those people think you're a series of murders. You kill and kill–”

“Well we have to make them believe that to cover our tracks.”

“Stop laying tracks!”

Eether stiffened. “This is my thesis, madame.”

“Well, bring me the man who came with me. The other one who didn’t belong.”

“We can’t just–”

“Do it.”

“We can only activate it three times in a month. It needs to recharge,” said Vander.

“There’s the emergency–” said Eether.

“Shut up,” said Vander.

“We were going to send it when our colleague sent the beacon, but he called us right away to tell us he was all right. The pod is still there.”

“So send that,” said Donna.

“We can’t,” growled Vander. “It needs the emergency beacon to direct it.”

“Is there _anything_ in this room you know how to use?” Donna glared at the unmistakable coffee machine in the corner. “Anything?”

“Actually,” said Vander. “Yes.” He reached under the nearest table and produced a gleaming thing shaped like a gun. “You will not interfere any longer, whoever you are.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Donna. Strangely, panic didn’t feel like the right word. These men could barely manage complete sentences, much less killing. “Listen, you want a thesis? How about I, a genuine alien with telepathic abilities,” and she prayed that that would work out, “tell you _exactly_ what I think of you, and you write your thesis on that.”

Vander looked interested, then seemed to remember to frown. “I'm not sure that's enough material...”

“Oh, watch me, you liver-spotted flatworm.”

*

“Arik.” The big man had released the Doctor and now they stood among the slowly drifting remnants of the populace. “A word.”

The man followed the Doctor a few paces off. He wasn’t standing particularly straight or looking particularly happy.

“How long did you say you’ve lived here?”

“Three years,” said Arik. “Well before the Grasper came.”

“Before. Interesting. And you’ve been present for every visitation.”

The whites of Arik’s eyes were showing. “I'm in as much danger as any of you are.”

“Close, very close. Where's your emergency beacon, Arik?”

“It–my what?” Arik swallowed hard.

“Your emergency beacon. In case you got bored manipulating this lot and wanted to go home?”

Arik’s large fists clenched. “Stop asking questions you don't want answers to!”

“Oh, but you see, my friend is missing, and I do want answers. You had the emergency beacon. But you didn’t set it off. It went off too early for you. Someone else interfered, didn’t they? A child, perhaps? The one that just got disappeared? Is his accidental discovery the only reason I’m here to interfere? Just a child and a toy….”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

*

“Honestly, I could make a better science fair out of my left _sock_ , at least that hasn’t destroyed any families yet! You need to get on with inventing an ethics board so they can kick you out of your own experiment! You lank-haired, mouth-breathing _wankers_!”

“We don’t have to take this,” said Vander, raising the gun.

Eether was staring, mouth agape. He reached over without looking to press the muzzle down again. “We’re linguists, man. Listen to this.”

“ _And another thing_!”

*

The Doctor eyed Arik appraisingly. “Bring the teleporter back and I’ll get out of your life. Bring it back. Send me where you sent Donna.”

“You want to see?” rumbled Arik. “You’ll see.” He turned and started back toward the building he had come from earlier.

The Doctor started after him.

“Don’t go,” a girl said. The Doctor turned to find the teenager who had been holding the missing boy’s hand. She cast a nervous look at Arik and edged around to keep the Doctor between them. “Don’t go in there,” she whispered. “Not while he’s angry.”

“Why?” said the Doctor, stooping a little to face her.

She shook her head. “Are you really going to go to where all of the others went?”

“Yes, I am.”

“When you see my brother,” she said, “tell him….” She took a tiny thing from her pocket and pressed it into his hands. It was a thumb-sized emergency beacon, smooth and mauve, the only thing non-brownscale in the world. She took her hand back and dashed a sleeve across her eyes. “Tell him he did the right thing with this. Tell him I’ll see him again. Tell him…that’s a promise.”

The Doctor set a hand on her fine brown hair. “I will,” he said. Then he straightened. Arik had turned, glaring.

The Doctor raised the beacon in a jaunty half-salute, and activated it.

Something at Arik’s hip buzzed.

“Are you going to get that?” said the Doctor.

Arik set a wide stance and crossed his arms over his chest. He really was a rather big man. “I was doing my part for science,” he growled.

“And science might thank you after it crawls out from under the wreckage you caused. But somehow I don’t think it will.”

Arik unclipped something from under his tunic and raised his to his ear. “Fine,” he said. “Bring us back.”

The Doctor beamed, and sprang to hug Arik tight. The light split the square. Seconds later they were gone.

*

The Doctor bounced backward and looked around at the false village. Only a few people were in sight; after all, the three samples for the month had already arrived. “Interesting,” he yelled. “Wasn’t I just here? Donna? Can you hear me?”

The second teleport was cold and abrupt, but it brought him into the room.

Arik wasn’t there, which suited the Doctor fine. Donna was gesticulating. “Now leave that button alone, you absolute grade-A rodents! You wretched, soggy dishrags wiped on a steaming pot of mediocrity! I’ve got half a mind to dunk you by your ankles into a vat of day-old–”

“Donna!” the Doctor said behind her.

“You can’t distract me with cheap tricks!” said Donna.

“ _Donna_!”

She spun. “Oh! Doctor!”

He ran up, threw his arms around her, and pulled her off her feet for a few seconds. Then he remembered the rest of the room. “I found our emergency beacon fellow. I take it he’s with the two of you.”

Eether scowled. “I brought you here so you would stop harassing our subjects.”

“Subjects? You’re a king now?”

“It’s science. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Sit down. We’ll get to you.”

“I really,” said the Doctor,

“Really,” said Donna,

“Think not,” they said.

“Anyway,” said the Doctor, “I see you’ve got your slave settlement and your permanently cowed settlement. I got your man out before they started talking pitchforks, you’re welcome.”

Vander stood, glaring. “You had better get to a point if you have one.”

“I do, actually. Listen, you are sending those people back to their homes and letting their village live unmolested. Is that clear?”

Vander and Eether exchanged looks. Vander sighed.

“We don’t know how to,” said Eether. “As we were explaining before this woman showed up. We can’t reverse it. Vander, did you get the transcript?”

“Every unusual word,” said Vander. “But the teleport – we can’t help you.”

“I’m reasonably certain I can. Weelll, I could. Weell, it’s almost certainly a simple adjustment. Well. Why don’t you just get me to the mechanism?”

The scientists led the way as if racing toward the next greatest discovery, which might have been true. The teleport polarity reversal took mere minutes. The Doctor and Donna watched on a big screen, apparently taking advantage of a camera Arik had set up to watch the town square. The boy with the promises went through first, stepping into the grasper and stepping out into the video feed, and his sister rocketed from where she had been watching to hug him. One by one, the villagers in the experimental settlement stepped back out to the village they had been ripped from. People were pouring into the square now, squealing, hugging, holding hands. Brother and sister crowded into a tight hug with two adults. Parents were testing the heights of their children, old marrieds or lovers were easing themselves up to where they could dare kisses. The Doctor and Donna couldn’t stop smiling as the village was repaired, as something other than mud and despair came to dominate the landscape.

“Coffee?” said Vander.

Donna and the Doctor spun. “No, thanks,” said Donna. “No hard feelings?” She had, after all, gotten creative in the middle there.

“Our eyes have been opened. This day is going down in history…as first contact with someone more kind than anyone our people have ever met.”

“Him,” clarified Eether, eyeing Donna. “Just saying.”

The Doctor grinned. “Two more reverse teleports. After that I expect you’ll want to hand some of this over to the engineers and the ethicists, see whether you can control it and whether you should control it before you start handing it to graduate students.” He started flipping controls. “Donna.” And the two of them teleported once more, only to have to gently shoo away the rejoicing villagers who had gathered around the TARDIS.

And then they were inside and home. Donna smiled when she fell in step. The Doctor smiled beside. “You know what this means,” he said.

Donna thought of her rant and its transcript. “I just upset an entire civilization’s natural progression?”

He scowled. “What? No. Why would you do that?” And that was the end of the serious expression. “What this means is…everybody lives! They all get to come home. For today, for once.” He squeezed her hand and beamed. “Everybody lives!”


End file.
